A Self Advocate Fights Oppression

Menu

Categories

How To Share A Space With Your Partner (when you both have accessibility needs)

Standard

As we continue in the Series That Never Ends (parts 1, 2, and 3), I like to dream that this will be the final installment. But I thought that last week, and here we are. Who knows what exciting new topics will be birthed within this blog post?

In the meantime, there’s a subgenre of competing access needs that I have never seen addressed, but that seems VERY important to discuss, and I have many Thoughts about it. That subgenre is when you are married to or living with someone whose access needs in some ways compete with your own.

But Olivia, you might say, how often does that happen? Well surprisingly often. I personally know…well almost every couple I know has at least a few accommodations they’re working with and that means two people have to find out how to accommodate each other basically 24/7. I know one couple in which one has severe anxiety and the other has severe misophonia making requests for noise accommodations a challenge, one couple in which one person has PTSD that is triggered by criticism, and another who has anxiety triggered by mess, meaning conversations about who has to take care of the house or whether things are being kept up can turn into meltdowns.

What do you do? How do you provide for different needs and make space for different ways of reacting to emotions?

I do not have the answers. I have some suggestions.

Get Yourself a Safe Space

More than anything else in the world, and perhaps this is simply because I am anxious introvert, I must recommend that every person has at least one room that is exclusively theirs or that feels 100% safe. It’s hard to articulate the way that having place to go where you don’t feel environmental stress or discomfort can bring your base level of functioning up. It allows a small amount of respite. When you’re living with someone who has differing needs from your own and the rest of the house may be a space of negotiation and compromise, having one area that is 100% you can make the difference between “home is exhausting” and “I have a place to recharge.”

That place to recharge allows you to disengage if a solution isn’t happening immediately, or if the shared spaces simply become too much for you. It helps to limit the amount of resentment you might feel when your needs don’t get met, helps keep you from hitting a meltdown point, and that space to breathe allows you to brainstorm solutions when your emotions are lowered.

So #1 piece is to make sure that you have one place where your needs are met, that belongs to you. But the rest of your house still exists, and you might want to eat meals with your housemate or occasionally interact with them. What do you do?

Talking About It

Because accommodations can be a fraught topic, I personally recommend setting aside a specific time to discuss them when no one’s emotions are high, but additionally setting up ongoing check ins so that it’s normal to discuss accommodations, and you don’t get that Serious Conversation vibe that can freak anyone out. Check in with your partner and see if the accommodations you’ve put in place are working for them. Let them know if they forget about yours. Make it normal, make it easy, and make it common to talk about whatever you need to be comfortable in your home.

When, Where, and How to Accommodate

Next, I think it’s not only important to discuss the types of behaviors that are difficult for each other (e.g. your constant need for reassurance sets off my anxiety) but also to discuss different spaces in the house, and how each one can be used most effectively. This might mean each of you makes a list of what you’d ideally like, and then you decide what’s easy (you institute it immediately), what you can do sometimes (maybe you have a specific room for it) and what will be challenging (we’ll get to this soon). In my home, the computer room is our quiet space. We talk there sometimes, but if one of us is on our computer with headphones on, it’s not time to bring up anything serious.

Do you want to set aside certain safe spaces? Do you want to say that “in space x I ask that you don’t eat, or don’t use this fidget”? It can help to give certain behaviors an expected time and place rather than out of the blue. This also gives someone who might need to fidget, bring up their anxieties, use an accommodation device, or accommodate their own needs in some other way a place they can go to do it. There also might be certain spaces that are particularly challenging to one of you. For a long time our computer room was set up such that I was facing away from the door, and my husband could come up and touch me on the shoulder without me noticing him at all. This was Not Pleasant so we rearranged.

When you hit the hard lines (e.g. one person can’t control their facial muscles and the other has misophonia) you may have to set specific rooms where things can or cannot happen, or decide that one person’s particular set of needs has to trump. It’s important to discuss these and have a way to bring it up.

Integrating Accommodations Into Your Life

Finally, it’s good to create a language for moving forward. Circumstances will change over time. Maybe you were fine with saying your partner gets to eat in the computer room with you, but you’re having a shit day and you need more space. You need to have a way to communicate that, and an understanding that the “rules” will change in the moment. It’s also good to have a way to remind your partner if they’re doing something they’d said they won’t (e.g. my partner knows I prefer there be music or noise on if he’s eating next to me). It can feel like nagging, but sometimes it does take time to develop the habit. If your partner feels like it you might brainstorm ways to build the habit together, e.g. a small visual reminder like a post it.

Essentially, there are a few ways you can manage competing access needs in a home: you can say that certain people get their accommodations at a specific time or place. You can say that one person’s need trumps another. Or you can try to find ways to make the needs mesh. A mix of both will probably be the best for everyone, but you have to talk about it to find what works for you.